The pin is pulled from a grenade on a grenade belt, causing the wearer and anyone in the immediate vicinity to explode. It can be used to elaborately kill a tooled-up enemy or as a makeshift suicide belt. Expect it to be used on a nearly triumphant enemy leading to a cathartic Oh, Crap! moment for the villain before he explodes.

Related to Grenade Tag in which a character during hand-to-hand combat secretly plants a bomb onto their opponent's body before quickly retreating. Both are a subtrope of Why Am I Ticking?

As for why it's called a Pineapple Surprise, British and American WorldWar and Vietnam-era grenades were nicknamed "pineapples", due to their shape (note the trope image.) Incidentally, WW2 German grenades were called potato mashers (they had a handle which increased their throwing range). Most modern grenades are spherical.

Done famously in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Battle Tendency by Joseph Joestar against Straizo. The latter being a superhuman vampire, along with knowing how to use the Ripple, Joseph had no chance at a plain brawl. So as he runs away, he reveals that he had somehow snuck not one, but several grenades, strung together, onto his opponent's clothes, and his running away made him unpin all the grenades at once.

In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, during her first escape attempt from Yami's base, Shigure Kosaka pulls the pins on a mook's three grenades with her toes. To his credit, the mook manages to throw the grenades away in time.

Played for laughs in the Kochikame manga. Military crazed cop Volvo Saigo who's armed to the teeth has accidentally released his pins when fastening his seatbelt and from swimming. Since this is a cartoon, he gets better.

Comic Books

Stephanie Brown does this to her father the Cluemaster in Batman Eternal #3; pulling the pin on one of the smoke canisters hanging on his costume when he tries to shoot her.

Happens to a mercenary in Danger Girl and the Army of Darkness when his possessed hand pulls out the pins of the grenades he is wearing on his vest.

Abbey herself pulls this on an enemy early in the original Danger Girl comic.

Hack/Slash: In Interdimensional Women's Prison Breakout, Samhain does this to Bomb Queen: as she slaps a paralysis disk on his back, he pulls out the pins of all the grenades on her vest.

During a flashback to Jesse's father's time in Vietnam in Preacher, a group of soldiers find an old Vietnamese woman crouching in a hut. They try to talk to her, only for her to hold up a pulled grenade.

Jon Sable pulls this trick in Shaman's Tears #8: yanking the pin out of one of the grenades on a bandoleer worn by one of the nestlings as he flees their sewer lair.

In the Six Guns mini-series, the Two-Gun Kid shots a flashbang off the vest of mercenary, causing it to detonate.

In the comic Star Wars: Vader Down, after his TIE fighter sustains heavy damage Darth Vader has to make an emergency landing on a planet where the Rebel military has a post and was conducting drills. When surrounded by hundreds of rebel soldiers, Vader uses the Force to pull the pins on their grenades as they demand that he surrender, wiping out most of them before subjecting the survivors to a Mook Horror Show.

During a day out with Cessily, X-23 performs this during one of her battles with her former handler Kimura

Fanfiction

The Mass Effect Fanfiction Uplifted features the quarian Captain Hanala'Jarva fumbling throwing a grenade. Joachim Hoch grabs it to throw it further. He loses his arm doing so.

Film

In the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), one of the characters does this while about to be executed by the Corrupt Cop bad guys. It was only a flash bang, but it still caused a significant injury and distracted the captors enough for an escape attempt.

Casino Royale (2006): A bomber tries to use a tiny keyring bomb attached to a fuel tanker to blow up a plane. After a long fight with Bond, the bomber triumphantly pushes the switch on his detonator...only to realize that Bond had attached the bomb to his belt loop. Cue Oh, Crap! from the bomber and an amused grin from Bond.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker threatens to pull the pins on a jacket of grenades to escape the mobsters meeting with Lau.

In Furious 7, Dom manages to pull a variant of this by hanging a bag of granades onto Jakande's chopper. It takes a shot by Hobbs from the gun to set them off tho.

In the final battle in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Firefly pulls out one of his special bombs to use on Roadblock, only to find that Roadblock is holding the detonator. Boom!

A variation is used by the title character in the climax of Hellboy. When Hellboy sees that he is about to be eaten by the monster he grabs a grenade belt and yanks off all the pins. Possibly something of a subversion since Hellboy knew he would most likely survive the blast but he was going to be very sore tomorrow.

I Am Number Four: Number Four kills the leader of the Magadorians by using his telekinesis to set off all of the leader's futuristic bullets while they're still strapped to his chest.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005): John does this accidentally during the freeway chase, going for the grenade but accidentally yanking the pin. He quickly gets away, the explosion taking out the mook and the car he was riding in.

The accidental version happens in Once Before I Die, killing one of the American officers.

The Professional: Leon defeats the main villain using the suicide version of this. After being mortally wounded, Leon hands the villain the pin that has been pulled from a grenade. The villain is puzzled for a second, then opens Leon's jacket to see about a dozen grenades strapped to him. The bad guy has just enough time for an Oh, Crap! before being blown to bits.

In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Watson shoots a mook who just pulled the pin on a grenade. The wound isn't fatal, but it's disorienting enough that the mook can't find the primed grenade in the sack of identical grenades it fell into.

Tank Girl: The title character does this to the Water and Power mook who captured her, blowing him to bits.

Loki pulls this trick on Kurse in Thor: The Dark World; detonating the grenade he is carrying on his belt.

In X2: X-Men United, Magneto pulls the pins from a squad of soldiers all at once using his powers.

Literature

Doc Sidhe: Doc does this while possessed by the spirit of the Warbringer; using magic to cause the grenades Blackletter's men are carrying to detonate while they are still wearing them.

The short story Once More from the Top by A. Scott Glancy shows what happened when the marines were sent to clear out Innsmouth. A couple of soldiers have succeeded in driving back a shoggoth with flamethrowers only to be fired on by the townspeople. Realising the safety lever has been shot off a phosphorous grenade clipped to his webbing, and that when it goes off he'll also kill his friend as he's wearing a flamethrower tank full of jellied gasoline on his back, a soldier leaps into the river where the shoggoth has retreated to and blows them both up.

He loves to go on patrol, all alone, with a rifle, a Luger, a knife, plenty of ammo, and half a dozen grenades hung to his belt by their safety rings, so he can pluck them and throw them like ripe tomatoes. The fact that hanging grenades by their rings is not a good way to live to a respectable old age doesn't bother him at all. In fact, he tells with great relish how one came loose while he was creeping around a German position, and how it exploded under his feet, kicking his legs up in the air but leaving him miraculously unscratched.

In the Crusade pilot "War Zone" the away team investigating a crashed Drakh ship gets pinned down by a squad from the enemy crew. Dureena sneaks around back and trips a grenade on one of the Drakh soldiers' belts, ending the fight very quickly.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Starship Mine", after a scuffle with Picard, a thief makes off with a container of explosive trilithium resin. It turns out Picard removed a stabilizer from the container during the scuffle. She doesn't get far.

Walker, Texas Ranger: In "The Final Showdown Part 2", Chuck Norris does this to Big Bad. After a long fight, Chuck and his adversary fall out of a window and land on top of a car. After they both roll off the roof, Chuck reveals that he pulled the baddies grenade pin. As he runs off, the grenade explodes.

A variation on this trope is a valid way to stealthily initiate hostilities in the series. By reverse-pickpocketing explosives into a target's inventory, you blow them up; the obvious implication is that you pulled the pin beforehand. If they catch on, they even give an Oh, Crap! or Why Am I Ticking? reaction.

A radio show in Fallout 3 identifies this technique as "the old Shady Sands Shuffle." Performing it increments the "Pants Exploded" statistic and the first one earns the "Psychotic Prankster" achievement.

One of the ways to complete "I Put A Spell On You" for the Legion in Fallout: New Vegas is to pull the pin on Davey Crenshaw's grenade and later cite his pranking nature to convince Colonel Hsu that he planted the bomb on the NCR monorail.

Fallout 4 introduces Super Mutant Suiciders, a version of the super mutant that rushes the player with a mini-nuke as a suicide bomber. The safest way to take them out is to snipe the bomb (preferably from long range and before they notice you), killing both them and anyone else in the vicinity.

If you kill them without the mini nuke going off, you can actually loot it.

This is one of the takedowns you can learn in Far Cry 3. Interestingly, the person you pull it on is already dead, as it is a follow-up to a stealth knife assassination. The "surprise" belongs to the group of his friends that his body gets kicked into.

One of the animations for capturing an enemy tank in Mercenaries World In Flames has you pull a grenade just as one of the tank's crew pops out of the top hatch with a pistol. After a brief struggle, your character will pull back, at which point the tanker will try to shoot you only to realize that you swapped his gun for your grenade. You then shoot him in the chest, causing him to drop the grenade into the tank.

In XCOM 2, the Fuse psychic ability lets the Psi-Op detonate grenades or other explosives carried by an enemy or on their corpse.

Web Original

The title card for The Nostalgia Critic's review of Commando shows the critic holding four of Arnold's grenade pins, with him freaking out in the background.

Western Animation

Batman: Assault on Arkham: After he escapes from his cell, the Joker confronts one of the patrolling guards. The guard has just enough time to realise that the Joker is twirling a grenade pin around his finger before the tear gas grenade on his belt goes off.

In Family Guy, Stewie does this to Lois in the climactic fight scene of Lois Kills Stewie.

The Question does this to a Cadmus mercenary in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Fearful Symmetry", but he's nice enough to remove the grenade belt before pulling the pins so the guy has a chance to get clear of the blast.

Young Justice: In "Summit", Kid Flash pulls the pins on the smoke grenades being worn on the vests of three Light ninjas.

Real Life

U.S. Senator Max Cleland ended up being a real life case of this when a grenade whose pin had fallen out shredded both his legs and one of his arms during the Vietnam War. It turned out that the grenade came from a squad mate who had straightened all of the pins on his grenades (a dangerous but common enough practice during the war), but had failed to secure them with duct tape. Cleland and the hapless squaddie were disembarking from a helicopter, and the jolt of him jumping onto the ground was enough to jar the grenade loose.

Charles Murray, a Scottish career soldier who signed on in the French Foreign Legion for the experience, related a story of the aftermath of a gruelling training march in full kit with weapons load. After thirty kilometres' march, the Legion recruits established camp and one man got into a tent shared with seven other recruits, gratefully and heedlessly throwing off his pack and webbing. Unfortunately, the action of shucking his pack also tugged the pin out of a grenade insecurely attached to one of the straps... All eight were killed and shrapnel injured men in neighbouring tents.

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